In August of last year, P&G brought a case against Kraft, not for being the cheesiest but for selling coffee in plastic containers. That's right, 15 months in court over the materials used in packaging.

After more than three years of work and undergoing several alterations, Cincinnati City Council approved an “environmental justice” ordinance Wednesday in a close vote despite opposition from the business community.

Vice Mayor David Crowley, a Democrat in his last term, began working on the ordinance with an advisory committee in October 2005. Supporters held a rally at City Hall last week in anticipation of a decision, but Mayor Mark Mallory delayed a vote then because he believed council’s support was wavering. During the past few days, Crowley lobbied his colleagues hard and was able to muster the five votes needed for passage.

Ohio law has exception for wire-powered vehicles

A review of the fine print in Ohio law could spell trouble for
Duke Energy in its dispute with Cincinnati about who must pay to move utility
lines to accommodate the city’s streetcar project.

Readers of CityBeat’s
March 6 cover story know that one of the legal arguments made by Duke Energy is
that it said the system qualifies as a utility itself under Ohio law. And one
utility has no legal obligation to reimburse another utility, Duke added.

City officials disagree with Duke’s interpretation, and the two
sides currently are trying to negotiate a compromise to the impasse.

The city is willing to pay $6 million to relocate Duke’s natural gas, chilled water, fiber and electrical
infrastructure along the streetcar route, but the firm insists it will cost at
least $18.7 million and possibly more.

A close reading of the Ohio Revised Code (ORC), however, reveals
it is unlikely that a streetcar system qualifies as a “public utility.”

Under Ohio law, the following items are defined as public
utilities:

“A motor transportation company, when engaged in the
business of carrying and transporting persons or property or the business of
providing or furnishing such transportation service, for hire, in or by motor-propelled
vehicles of any kind, including trailers, for the public in general,
over any public street, road, or highway in this state.” ORC §4905.03

“(B) “Motor vehicle” means any vehicle, including mobile homes and recreational vehicles, that is propelled or drawn by power other
than muscular power or power collected from overhead electric trolley wires.
“Motor vehicle” does not include utility vehicles as defined in division (VV)
of this section, motorized bicycles, road rollers, traction engines, power
shovels, power cranes, and other equipment used in construction work and not
designed for or employed in general highway transportation, well-drilling
machinery, ditch-digging machinery, farm machinery, and trailers that are
designed and used exclusively to transport a boat between a place of storage
and a marina, or in and around a marina, when drawn or towed on a public road
or highway for a distance of no more than ten miles and at a speed of
twenty-five miles per hour or less.” ORC
§4501.01(B)

Streetcars operate using overhead trolley wires, thus they aren’t considered
motor vehicles under Ohio law. But do they even qualify as vehicles? The ORC
defines vehicles as:

“(A) “Vehicles” means everything on wheels or runners,
including motorized bicycles, but does
not mean electric personal assistive mobility devices, vehicles that are operated exclusively on
rails or tracks or from overhead electric trolley wires, and vehicles
that belong to any police department, municipal fire department, or volunteer
fire department, or that are used by such a department in the discharge of its
functions.” ORC §4501.01(A)

Of course, streetcars run on rails and use power from electric
trolley wires. So, they aren’t vehicles either.

The conclusion: Either “motor-propelled vehicles” mean the same as “motor
vehicles” (in which case it doesn’t apply to streetcars) or “motor-propelled”
is an adjective to “vehicle” (which also doesn’t apply, as streetcars aren’t
vehicles).

In each instance, a streetcar system doesn’t fall into the legal realm of a “motor transportation company” and therefore isn’t a “public utility.”

The phone hacking scandal surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers continues to explode, as the media baron and his son are appearing before a Parliament committee at this very moment. (Follow the proceedings on BBC’s web site here.)

Several U.S. media outlets have reminded the public that an American newspaper once faced its own phone hacking scandal, when The Cincinnati Enquirer was forced to apologize and pay $14 million to Chiquita Brands International in 1998 and renounce its investigative series on Chiquita and then-CEO Carl Lindner. So Cincinnati was on the cutting edge on yet another international trend.

One of the most common complaints among many residents over the decades is that Big Business controls City Hall and municipal government, not citizens. Although some officials have denied it, that seems to be the case when it comes to who will be the next city councilperson.

Nearly two years after the economic meltdown in fall 2008, the U.S. Senate voted Thursday to approve a sweeping financial reform bill aimed at the reckless Wall Street investors who caused the crisis.

The Senate voted 60-39 to pass the reforms sought by President Obama. Three Republicans — Scott Brown of Massachusetts, along with Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine — joined Democrats in supporting the bill.

Protestors will be ready to greet investors next week as Chiquita holds its annual stockholders meeting in downtown Cincinnati.

Two human rights groups — 8th Day Center for Justice and Witness for Peace — will demonstrate in an effort to hold Chiquita executives accountable for company payments made to terrorist groups in Colombia, payments the groups allege led to the murders of thousands of peasants and workers in the region.

Local startup accused of fraud by state

The city of Cincinnati is suspending its relationship with SoMoLend, the local startup that the city partnered with in December to connect small businesses and startups to $400,000 in loans.

The broken partnership comes in response to
accusations of fraud from the Ohio Division of Securities that have
forced SoMoLend to stop giving out loans in the state and could
lead to the business’s shutdown.

City spokesperson Meg Olberding told CityBeat in an
email that although the city partnered with SoMoLend in December, it
has yet to give out any loans through the crowdfunding incubator.

The Ohio Division of Securities says SoMoLend failed to
gather the proper federal and state licenses for a peer-to-peer lending
business and falsely inflated its performance and financing figures.

SoMoLend gained local and national recognition for
supposedly helping foster startup and small businesses by linking them
to loans through crowdfunding — a particularly promising proposition
given the state of the economy and research from the National Bureau of Economic Research that shows startups are the best drivers for economic and job growth.

But with the extent of the charges, it’s questionable whether SoMoLend had any success to begin with.

Candace Klein, CEO of SoMoLend, told The Cincinnati Enquirer
on Sunday that the company is currently in talks
with the state. She stressed that the Ohio Division of Securities won’t
issue a final order against SoMoLend until after a hearing scheduled for
October.

SoMoLend, which stands for Social Mobile Local Lending,
was founded in 2011. The business’s specialty is using crowdfunding
tactics to connect small businesses and startups with lenders. It then
packages the loans to sell them as notes and charges a fee or commission
for its services.

A statement given to the Colombian government by an ex-paramilitary leader could mean trouble for Chiquita Brands International as it tries to fight lawsuits about the firm’s payments to terrorist groups.

The statement — which was recently entered into the court record in the lawsuits — alleges the terrorist group had an "an open public relationship" with Chiquita in which it provided security services, as well as kidnapping and assassinating labor union leaders that caused problems for the company.